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Between ethics and semiotics. Signs and nature in the Anthropocene era

Tra etica e semiotica. Segni e natura nell’era dell’Antropocene

Entre éthique et sémiotique. Signes et nature à l’ère de l’Anthropocène

“Filosofi(e)Semiotiche” journal (Il Sileno Edizioni), volume 9, n. 1, 2022

Rivista “Filosofi(e)Semiotiche” (Il Sileno Edizioni), volume 9, n. 1, 2022

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Published on Monday, January 17, 2022

Summary

The Anthropocene, unlike other previous eras, is commonly recognized as the era in which the impact of human beings is most incisive in determining the dynamics of the climate and the planet in which we live. With this Call we intend, therefore, to highlight some aspects of the Anthropocene in order to suggest a rethinking of the relationship between human nature and the surrounding environment ; this will allow us to specify how ethics and semiotics can be used in a rethinking of these two categories, and, in general, of the link between language and nature, which inevitably involves the need to review our ways of “making world”.

Announcement

Editors

  • Valeria Dattilo (Department of Architecture, Università degli Studi “G. d’Annunzio” Chieti-Pescara);
  • Francesco De Pascale (Department of Culture and Society, Università degli Studi di Palermo);

Argument

The Anthropocene, unlike other previous eras, is commonly recognized as the era in which the impact of human beings is most incisive in determining the dynamics of the climate and the planet in which we live. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry Paul Crutzen (2005) argued, for example, that, from a geological point of view, the era in which we live presents modifications linked to human action capable of lasting for millions of years, giving a irreversible imprint on the transformations of the terrestrial environment. The debate on the concept of Anthropocene, in recent years has suffered a setback in the geological sciences due to the stratigraphic and temporal limits imposed within the disciplines and for the identification of the so-called “geological markers” and has become, instead, always more alive in the human and social sciences and in the Environmental Humanities, also involving geographers, philosophers, anthropologists and sociologists.

The same expression “era of the Anthropocene” was taken up by the French philosopher Michel Serres (2009), to rethink the relationship between human beings and nature, meaning by nature not only an object, a space to be dominated and manipulated, but a “subject of law”, as he states in his masterpiece, Le contrat naturel (1990): «much nature gives man, man must give that much back to nature, now a legal subject» (Serres, 1990, p. 18). Serres also made an important contribution to the debate between ethics and the Anthropocene.

The expressly interdisciplinary approach that characterizes the contemporary debate on the Anthropocene, leads us, therefore, to address this issue towards a fruitful dialogue between the philosophical and the scientific views, without the two visions canceling each other out.

And it is with this spirit that we present this Call.

In addition to the numerous attempts to provide a naturalistic, philosophical, sociological reading of the issue, with this Call we propose a semiotic reading of the question with an essential reference to human nature, as well as to nature in general.

This characterization of the problem is only apparently oxymorical, but in reality it aims to avoid any kind of reductionism, such as that of anthropizing nature.

With this Call we intend, therefore, to highlight some aspects of the Anthropocene in order to suggest a rethinking of the relationship between human nature and the surrounding environment; this will allow us to specify how ethics and semiotics can be used in a rethinking of these two categories, and, in general, of the link between language and nature, which inevitably involves the need to review our ways of “making world”.

Submission guidelines

  • Submission Deadline: 20 June 2022;
  • Notification of Acceptance: 10 July 2022;
  • Publication Date: 30 July 2022;

Contributions, in English, Italian, French, German, Spanish or Russian, must be sent to the e-mail address filosofiesemiotiche.ilsileno@gmail.com

References

Crutzen, P.J., (2005), Benvenuti nell’Antropocene!, Mondadori, Milano.

De Pascale, F., Dattilo, V. (2015), La semiosi dell’Antropocene. Riflessioni tra geoetica e semiotica a partire dal triangolo di Peirce, Filosofi(e)Semiotiche, 2, 1, pp. 90-98.

De Pascale, F., Dattilo, V. (2019), La sémiosis de l’Anthropocène: pour une réinterprétation de la relation entre l’homme et la nature par le biais de la géoéthique, Rivista Geografica Italiana, 2, 23-40.

De Pascale, F., Dattilo, V. (2021), The Geoethical Semiosis of the Anthropocene: The Peircean Triad for a Reconceptualization of the Relationship between Human Beings and Environment, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 111, 3, 647-654. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2020.1843994;

Eco, U., (1987), Trattato di Semiotica Generale, Bompiani, Milano.

Farinelli, F., (2004), Geografia. Un’introduzione ai modelli del mondo, Einaudi, Torino.

Latour, B., (2015), Face à Gaïa. Huit conférences sur le nouveau régime climatique, La Decouverte, Paris.

Peirce, C.S., (1958), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 1–6, 1931–1935, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, eds., vols. 7–8, Arthur W. Burks, ed., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Peirce, C.S., (1903), The Ethics of Terminology, Einaudi, Torino, pp. 113-119.

Serres, M., (1990), Le Contrat naturel, François Bourin, Paris.

Serres, M., (2009), Temps des crises, Le Pommier, Paris.


Date(s)

  • Monday, June 20, 2022

Keywords

  • anthropocene, semiotic, Peirce, nature, culture, human

Contact(s)

  • Francesco De Pascale
    courriel : francesco [dot] depascale [at] unito [dot] it

Information source

  • Francesco De Pascale
    courriel : francesco [dot] depascale [at] unito [dot] it

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Between ethics and semiotics. Signs and nature in the Anthropocene era », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Monday, January 17, 2022, https://calenda.org/955460

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